Mishima and Murakami on the Todai Riots

The late 1960s student movement in Japan, known as Zenkyōtō, is one of the keys to Haruki Murakami's writing, and Yukio Mishima is one of its most famous literary opponents. In this post we look at Mishima and Murakami against the backdrop of the University of Tokyo (Todai) riots, and what each writer made of that turbulent era.

The Zenkyōtō years

Zenkyōtō, short for the National Joint Struggle Committees, was a left-wing student movement that swept Japanese universities in 1968 and 1969. Murakami entered Waseda University's literature department in those years and spent seven years there, and it is hard to talk about his work without this background. In his early writing, he looks back at what he gained and lost in that time, and the experience of the student struggle is often the starting point of his literature. It left a lot of pain and loss, and it shaped not just his personality but his view of life.

The most famous episode at Todai was the Yasuda Auditorium siege, which ended in January 1969 when riot police cleared the building. Later that spring, in May 1969, Mishima made a notable visit to the university to debate Zenkyōtō students in person. It remains one of the most discussed encounters between a writer and student radicals in postwar Japan.

Yukio Mishima, a writer of the opposing pole

Mishima wrote novels, plays and criticism, acted, directed films, and was a political activist. He is said to have been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. He saw life itself as the highest art, and his world was shaped by an aestheticism devoted to strength, the body and beauty. In 1968 he founded a private right-wing group, the Tatenokai (Shield Society). In November 1970 he stormed a Japan Self-Defense Forces headquarters in Tokyo in an attempt to rouse the troops. It failed, and he died by suicide at the age of 45.

Mishima and the left-wing students stood far apart, yet the debate at Todai was surprisingly respectful. It tells us that even bitter opponents were wrestling with the same questions about identity.

Two writers, one troubled era

Japan had grown rapidly after the Second World War, but in the 1960s many young people felt they had lost their identity and their connection to others. That mood is the background of Norwegian Wood, which is set in the student movement years. People often compare Murakami and Mishima, and some claim Murakami was influenced by him. We think they are very different: Mishima is a writer of Japanese romanticism, intense, introspective and sometimes difficult, while Murakami is a popular writer with readers around the world, whose work blends fantasy and reality in a plain, refined style. Being easy to read does not make a novelist light.

It is only our personal opinion, but Mishima's skill with language is astonishing. He is a genius in the history of Japanese literature, and few writers expressed human emotion as delicately.

Harukists, do you hear any echo of Mishima in Murakami's books? Let us know in the comments. For more of Murakami's student years, read The Truth Behind Chungking Express and Norwegian Wood.